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Diamond Jubilee: The enduring majesty of Queen Elizabeth

LONDON—Little girls still dream about being princesses. Better to be a queen, the ever-after part.

The fantasy doesn’t usually get that far, beyond frothy ball gowns and ponies and tiaras.

Queen Elizabeth, seen at an event in London on Wednesday, celebrates her Diamond Jubilee this weekend. (LEWIS WHYLD / AFP)

A queen works for her crown. It’s a full-time job, a career, no less in a constitutional monarchy.

And it was never mere fantasy, anyway, for the daughter who would become Queen Elizabeth II, even when she was no more than one among many royal highnesses. Surely as a preternaturally wise child, exposed to the peculiarities of fey Uncle David, she would have had some premonition of the future. When the Prince of Wales took up with Wallis Warfield Simpson, the two-time American divorcee he would not give up to be king, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor likely sensed her fate as heiress presumptive, writ in sovereign DNA. Had the government somehow conceded to that marriage — unimaginable for the times — there would have been no babies, as indeed the banished couple never procreated, to succeed. Only, perhaps, with a different consort at his side would Edward VIII, so fleetingly king before abdicating, have provided a direct heir for the throne. We’ll never know, frankly, if he had it in him, so to speak. He does not strike one as particularly virile.

The ermine would inevitably have ensued to Elizabeth of York, celebrating 60 years as a monarch in a pageantry of spectacle over this bank holiday weekend, all her bunting-swathed kingdom kicking up its heels. The festivities were launched with a huge bang Friday morning as the destroyer HMS Diamond steamed into Portsmouth harbour firing off a 21-gun salute.

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An unprecedentedly massive flotilla on the River Thames, upwards of 10,000 Big Lunch street parties — groaning boards of Queen-frosted cakes and hearty English fare, vats of Jubilee pale ale on tap — a glittering procession in her open landau down the Mall (a dress rehearsal conducted in the wee hours Friday, instruments carried by marching bands but not a note struck lest the royal household’s sleep be disturbed), a trip to the races, a flypast featuring World War II Spitfires and Lancaster bombers, and a marquee pop concert around the Victoria Monument, turned now into a stage in the round: Those are just the exclamation points on the Jubilee itinerary.

It promises to be an amazing four days as the nation pays tribute to the constancy of a queen who’s put the spine in Britain throughout the best and worst of eras, adapting when necessary — on Facebook! — yet also unbending in a way that her subjects admire. They are so very proud of the little old lady who lives in that grand pile of bricks up the road, still doing her duty in fine fettle at 86 and much more smiley these days. “My face is aching with smiling,” she said on a 1951 trip to Canada, when criticized for her grim expression.

Politicians disappoint, disposable celebrity fades and even the high-wattage dazzle of Princess Diana has dimmed in memory, but Queen Elizabeth endures as institution and personage, a living and breathing repository of history. Just think of the things she’s seen, the great men and women who’ve paid homage, from Winston Churchill to Nelson Mandela, who has always addressed her simply as “Elizabeth.”

Viewed through a sentimentalizing prism, Elizabeth is usually depicted as the somewhat wistful child of destiny, an adolescent who bit her lip and squared her shoulders bravely when country called. In the past, she’s mused about the life she would have preferred, a country wife with lots of dogs and horses.

What a waste that would have been.

Besides, Elizabeth has got all the country and, at least in the titular concept, 15 more, plus some dozen dogs, plus a string of finest-bred racehorses, live versions replacing the lineup of bridled and saddled toy versions she enjoyed as a toddler, even then equines more of a diversion than the 150 dolls she owned.

Hers has not been a life to repine, not for Elizabeth and not for the realm.

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She married the man she fell in love with as a 13-year-old, from which no one could dissuade her, a happy union that’s lasted more than six decades.

She has her choice of castles and estates in which to muck about.

It’s her face on the money and the stamps and the schoolroom portraits; her signature on every law passed by Parliament.

Her name is invoked in blessings and anthems and pledges of allegiance. Her navy, her air force, her army, her treasures . . .

Much of that treasure is merely held in trust. The queen’s personal wealth is estimated at $500 million (U.S.), making her merely the 266th richest individual in the country.

But she will always be the loftiest person in the room, without peer.

It has not been a gilded cage.

And she is beloved, at minimum well-regarded even by anti-monarchists and punk rockers who’ve taken her name in vain. If there are no atheists in foxholes, so too have there been precious few republicans who’ve declined the knightly honours she’s bestowed — eh, Dame Helen Mirren?

How absurd to pretend hers has been a solitary burden, poor little rich majesty.

Elizabeth has been a knockout sovereign, resurrecting the royal brand from the nadir point of the ’90s, when The Firm was brought into such disrepute by her children and their spouses. And, one annus horribilis notwithstanding, there’s no evidence she hasn’t enjoyed every minute of it, arguably more at ease as monarch than mother.

Some women just aren’t particularly maternal. QEII has been a working mum all her adult life. She had the wherewithal to make it less arduous, to spend more time with her children. But she sprung from a class where kids were packed off to boarding school early — though she wasn’t because her parents made different choices, and didn’t value education in any event.

It’s a pity the young Elizabeth didn’t go to university, was instructed by tutors and mentors and then received a crash course in constitutional affairs. She clearly has a fine mind and has been extensively self-taught, graduating from her own distinct school of hard knocks, albeit cushioned in velvet.

Had the cards fallen any other way, Elizabeth could have led as aimless an existence as sister Margaret — a woman who never seriously considered giving up her HRH privileges for the man she loved, for all that the doomed love affair with Group Capt. Peter Townsend has been romanticized.

She’s never given an interview, which is probably to be commended, keeping in mind the disastrous revelations made on camera by Charles and Diana as they waged PR warfare in the ’90s. It would be fascinating to know what Elizabeth really thinks — about anything. She has kept a daily diary, its contents available to historians only upon her death, but they’re unlikely to prove as diverting as those left behind by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Elizabeth was, however, an early enthusiast of the home-movie camera, some of that never-before-seen footage released this week as part of Prince Charles’ personal valentine to the woman he calls “Mama.” In one sequence, broadcast on the BBC Friday night, the prince recalls his mother practising for the coronation by wearing the heavy crown while bathing Charles and Anne. In an ill-advised biography released after Charles split from Diana, he described his mother as aloof, yet now he extols her as warm, applauding the Queen’s “amazing poise” and “natural grace,” neither qualities that he’s exhibited.

She holds neither a passport nor a driver’s licence; can’t vote or appear as a witness in court. But she’s the most widely travelled monarch ever, tireless through all those royal tours over the decades (she visited a leper colony long before Diana came along to hold hands with AIDS patients); the countless introductions to local dignitaries at eye-glazing civic functions; the audiences granted to prime ministers, presidents, ambassadors and high commissioners. Compare those staid scenes to the photograph snapped of an adolescent Elizabeth dancing with abandon on the deck of a ship bound for South Africa in 1947 as she participated in the “Crossing the Line’’ frolics at the equator.

In the winter season of her life, she still likes to cut a rug.

A pretty princess and young queen, with her waspish waist and smashing bosom, a dewy complexion — her skin remains remarkably unlined — and lovely shoulders, shown to such advantage in many of the 140 formal painted portraits for which she’s posed.

Her courtiers have marvelled that Elizabeth never perspires in public. To Laura Bush, she once assured that it was perfectly OK to reapply lipstick at the table after a meal. So we know she keeps at least a lipstick tube in her ubiquitous handbag, the purse often affixed to the table with a suction cup — rather than tucked between her feet — into which she discreetly spits for traction.

Elizabeth’s natural personality has had to be subdued in public across the decades but upon casting her eyes on the New York City skyline for the first time, approaching the city by ship, she couldn’t suppress a delighted “Wheeee!’’

In her ninth decade, the queen has allowed herself to loosen up. She needn’t be quite so stiff anymore, so fiercely dignified.

Fifteen years ago, she watched sadly as her beloved Britannia sailed away for decommissioning. The government refused to replace it, citing costs and the public’s unwillingness to foot the bill.

It was the only time Queen Elizabeth II has ever shed a tear in public.

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